Sapientia
Wisdom to perceive thee, diligence to seek thee, patience to wait for thee.
An iPhone app that holds your apps behind a physical tag and answers every reach with a prayer — and carries Terce, Sext and None from the Divine Worship office in your pocket.
Rule, tag, prayer
Apps, categories and websites, held by Screen Time. Keep as many rules as your day needs, and the day’s feast and its Collect stand at the top of the screen.
The session opens and closes by touch, not by will. Leave the tag on a shelf across the house and the phone has to be carried to it.
O GRACIOUS and holy Father, give us Wisdom to perceive thee, diligence to seek thee, patience to wait for thee, eyes to behold thee, a heart to meditate upon thee, and a life to proclaim thee; through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Not a grey wall and a countdown. The Prayer of St. Benedict every time, or the Collect of the day following the Ordinariate calendar.
A vice is not stopped. It is replaced.
Blocking an app only empties the hour. The habit that reached for the phone is still there, and a vacancy is not a virtue — it waits to be filled by the first thing at hand. So Sapientia puts something in its place: the Little Hours, kept at midmorning, midday and midafternoon, until the reach that went to the screen goes to prayer instead.
The responsory, the office hymn, three psalms in Coverdale, the chapter of the day and its collect. Divine Worship: Daily Office, bundled with the app, so nothing is fetched and nothing is missing on a train. A notice names the hour; the office waits until you come to it.
Five or six minutes, three times a day.
Psalms 120, 121, 122
Psalms 123, 124, 125
Psalms 126, 127, 128
Everything Sapientia knows is on your phone
No account, no analytics, no server holding your rules or your kept hours. Write the lot out as CSV or JSON whenever you like, and erase it in one action.
Habits are learned by the body
Virtue is not a decision held in the mind; it is a practice worn into the hands and the feet. So the session turns on a thing you can touch: an NFC device, magnetic on the back, set on a shelf, a doorframe or beside an icon. No batteries, no charging, nothing to plug in — it takes what little power it needs from your phone the moment you hold it near. Crossing the room to it is part of the prayer, grace working through matter, as it always has.
Reserve one from the first batch
Add your email and we will send you one message when the tags are ready to order. No newsletters, no marketing, and your address is never sold or shared with anyone.
Pray the hours. Put the phone down.
Sapientia is in beta on iOS. Testers get every build, and a hand in what the app becomes.